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The mojo lost, found (8/7/2013)

My mojo’s been off lately. I don’t know what caused it and there are several possible reasons: worst summer ever in my life history, the perpetual rain or just the general sense of loss I have experienced. But my mojo was horribly and devastatingly off kilter.

I needed a change.

So I had about 8 inches of hair whacked off a few months ago. I loved it and it was so much easier to get ready in the morning. However, it didn’t feel like me.

People told me I look sweet and there’s nothing about me that’s “sweet.”

Shoes didn’t even fix it.

New eye shadow didn’t either.

I decided I needed some red lipstick. I have always been a nudey-beigey-peachy-pink neutral gal, so I was going to listen to my friend Renee’s longstanding advice and bought a red lipstick.

“You don’t look like you,” Cole declared watching me blot my lips. I had to agree. I didn’t like the garish brightness and worried if the lipstick contained lead.

Nothing worked. If anything, I think it made me feel more like a walking affirmation my mojo was gone.

“My mojo’s off,” I cried to my friend Yolande.

“I know what you mean,” she replied. “I feel – I don’t know how to describe it but I can’t get out of this funk.” Yolande ran through her issues and we found our complaints practically mirrored each other.

“What is wrong with us?” I wondered aloud.

Something was horribly off for both of us and that was not only frightening but it was just not acceptable.

We were going to have to send out a missing mojo bulletin. Here we were, both in our early 40’s and we were supposed to be technically in our prime and these powerful, confident women, we both were pretty smart and street savvy.

We both had some common sense, a characteristic that is sorely missing nowadays, and we both had some business sense too. So what had changed?

I reminded Yolande of the first time I met her. We were in a mutual friend’s store, when a mutual frenemy came in and made a comment about my weight.

“You’ve lost a little bit but you need to lose a little bit more,” the frenemy commented.

I felt myself shrink about 10 inches in height at the comment. I had enough of the chubby comments from the ex-husband.

Yolande in all her tall, blonde glory, turned around, gave me a once over from head to toe and then glanced back at the frenemy before returning her big eyes back to me.

“You – are fabulous. Seriously, you are adorable and perfect.”

She looked back at the frenemy and said “you, you are just jealous and need to get that moustache waxed.”

“Did I really do that?” she said between laughter.

“Yes, you did!” I affirmed, laughing myself. “You were incredible! You were so vivacious and sure of yourself. I knew we were going to be friends at that very moment.”

And that’s when it hit me. That’s where our mojo was – somewhere left behind in our 20’s, when we were brazen enough to think we had no limits, that we could do whatever we set out to do. We had both been fearless, thinking we were invincible and nothing could stand in our way. We embraced our inner goddesses and acted like we truly were some divine entities here on earth. Well, Yolande acted that way, I just faked it pretty well.

We lost ourselves. That’s where our mojo went – we lost it. We lost ourselves. We forgot how to stand up for ourselves, how to be confident, how to embrace our power of being women. We somehow just let the mundane wear us down and when faced with challenges, we backed down and got beat instead of letting out a “Towanda!” battle cry and pressing forward.

“Well, how do we get it back?” she asked when I finished.

By remembering we are those fierce, confident women and embracing our inner goddesses and lifting our fellow sisters up to remind them of that. Because we all need to be told we are fabulous, adorable and perfect, even when – or especially when – we don’t feel that way.

“That’s how we do it?” she asked.

“That’s how we do it. That’s how we are going to get our mojo back.”

And by remembering sometimes, we have to just fake our mojo until it truly comes back.